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There’s a sharp intake of breath somewhere in the room, but I don’t look to see who it is.

“Then the chanting started. There was a stench of sulfur. I thought someone had lit a match. Then the sulfur was replaced with the scent of lavender.” My hands reach for my whiskey glass, needing something to hold on to. “After the lavender was the scent of ozone. Just this electric smell so thick in the air, I thought I could taste it. I remember thinking that if I inhaled any more, it would crawl into my brain and never leave.”

I glance up and meet Dax’s gaze with the most serious expression I can muster. “That’s what I smelled tonight, as soon as I walked through the warehouse door. It’s been hundreds of years, but I’ll never forget it. My Alpha recognized it first. My instincts—the Alpha inside of me—flared. It wanted… I don’t know. It was like it woke up and stretched for the first time. Which sounds ridiculous but…” I shrug. “Then my Curse reacted to the threat.”

“Hold on. You said your Alpha instincts?”

When he speaks, my gaze snaps to Caelan. He’s gone unnervingly still, whiskey glass hovering mid-air like someone hit pause before he could take a drink. His hand flexes around the glass before he places it down carefully and focuses all his attention on me. “Was your Alpha telling you to attack, or protect?”

Something in the way he asks that question makes me narrow my eyes in suspicion. I take a moment to think despite already knowing the answer.

What the hell is going on with him? He’s barely spoken this entire meeting, and now he looks… anxious?

“Protect,” I draw the word out slowly. “My Alpha wanted me to find whatever the threat was and eradicate it. My damn fangs dropped. Why?”

Caelan and Dax share a weighted look, and centuries of being a Bonded pack make it easy for me to grasp what’s going on.

These assholes are hiding something.

“Why do you ask Caelan?” I demand. I know I sound suspicious, but damn. They’re hiding something from me. My own packmates. I try to tell myself I’m overreacting. That I shouldn’t care if they’re not telling me something—it’s not like we have to share every fucking detail of everything with each other.

Tonight, though, I’m on edge. I already feel incapable of handling big decisions and like I’m a walking liability to my team and pack. My Curse going off has me drowning in self-loathing and second-guessing every thought that pops into my head.

Maybe they’re not telling me whatever they’re hiding because they don’t think I can handle it. Maybe they think I’ll go off again.

It’s easier just to follow their lead than take a gamble on my own feelings and wind up accidentally killing someone closest to me.

It’s not cowardly, it’s fucking survival.

Finally, Caelan groans softly and looks at me, his eyes full of resignation.

“Because, the way you felt tonight is the same way my Alpha responded when I was at the Varenthrall estate—and saw his Omega daughter for the first time.”

I can’t tear my eyes away from his. The room goes completely still right before a wall of pissed-off Alpha pheromones so thick it makes me gag explodes from across the table.

I snap my attention to Daxen. His face is set in a scowl so deep it sends a shiver down my spine. Slowly, so slowly it seems unnatural, he leans forward and closes the distance between his seat and Caelan’s. His voice is deep and full of rage when he snarls at our packmate.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

Oh, shit.

Chapter 7

Daxen

Idon’t simply enjoy being in control. I need it to survive.

I need to understand how things—people, situations, history, science—work, and how the pieces fit together. I need to know how to fix them when they don’t.

Which is why the magical signatures at Varenthrall’s Estate and the warehouse have me already on edge. Wards like that shouldn’t exist. At least, they shouldn’t exist outside a handful of very old vampire bloodlines, and the ones that do exist certainly shouldn’t be strong enough to fry my gear, let alone cause it to glitch out. Twice.

Only a select few vampires have figured out how to utilize whatever part of our DNA makes us different from humans and wolven, and turn it into a tactical advantage. They use blood rituals to channel it into things like scrying, basic healing, cloaking, and making wards.

I’ve always understood the basics of it, but I made a point to study it thoroughly once I met Vae during Bloodbound training and discovered we were a pack. I taught myself the fundamentals and built my knowledge from there, one piece at a time.

If my packmate was going to be forced to deal with a curse attached to his very being, I was sure as fuck going to understand exactly how it worked.

The issue is, Blood Rites aren’t something you can Google. They’re closely guarded. Hoarded like secrets in a dying man’s mouth.